The United Kingdom’s Department of Education recently released new guidelines on the treatment of transgender students, essentially banning social transition in schools absent direct parental permission. This guidance forces transgender youth, especially those with unsupportive family members, to choose between their safety and their authenticity. Alarmingly, the guidance displays a flagrant disregard for medical and social science, relying heavily on ideas that have become popular among right-wing politicians in recent years but have no true basis in medical science, such as social contagion theory. In a legal sense, this new guidance violates the UK’s treaty obligations through the UDHR, ECHR, ICCPR, and ICESCR, namely: expression, self-determination, privacy, non-discrimination, health, and education. Volume XLVII staff member August Naston here focuses on the rights to expression, self-determination, and education in the ECHR and ICCPR, arguing that in issuing this guidance the U.K. has violated myriad treaty obligations under international human rights law.
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